Marked
by SamoaPhoenix9
Summary: Movieverse post-Dawn Treader. Eustace discovers his time as a dragon has left its mark in more ways than one.


**Marked**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That belongs to the estate of C.S. Lewis and Fox 2000 (for the movie)_

_Author's Note: This is a movieverse fic. Much as I love the book, this fic couldn't have happened in the book universe because there's no way Eustace could have gotten a scar during his brief time as a dragon._

"Eustace Clarence, what's this?"

Eustace Clarence Scrubb turned to find his mother Alberta staring very hard at him. Or, to be more specific, at his back. Her eyes were narrowed to slits.

"What?" He twisted around to look, but he couldn't see what it was she was so focused on. She had happened to catch him coming out of the bath, and though he wore trousers, he had decided it was too hot in the stifling second floor of the house to wear a shirt on the short trip from the washroom to his bedroom. "I'll put my shirt back on, I promise."

"No, what's that on your back?"

"What?" Eustace twisted harder, but he still couldn't see anything. He felt around the area she had zeroed in on—his left shoulder. Nothing unusual under his fingers. "I don't…"

Alberta seized his arm and dragged him back into the steamy washroom. With rough fingers she positioned him with his back to the mirror over the sink. "Look!" Her voice had grown somewhat shrill, and she pointed with a finger that shook.

"Alberta," said Eustace with considerably more patience than he would have used even a week ago, "The mirror's fogged up."

With an angry noise his mother did what under ordinary circumstances she never would have dreamed of doing: she dragged her bare hand across the glass to clear the condensation from the mirror. Normally she would have hunted around for a soft cloth to do the job. She'd be hours getting the fingerprints off later. Or making his cousin Lucy do it, more likely. Eustace still couldn't figure out what had her so frantic.

"That!" she said, pointing again, her voice even higher than before.

_That_. Eustace stared, Alberta momentarily forgotten. He had never noticed before, but then, he'd never had reason to notice before. The only way he would have seen it was if someone sharp-eyed, like his mother, had spotted it first and called his attention to it.

There was a scar on his back.

Eustace twisted and felt with his fingers, trying to get a better view without accidentally moving so that he could no longer see his back in the mirror.

The scar was white, about as thick as his littlest finger, and straight as if it had been sliced with a razor. It was perhaps three inches long, cutting its way from just above his left shoulderblade to his spine. It wasn't raised above the rest of the skin and there was no redness around it, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a scar.

"What happened, Eustace Clarence?" his mother demanded. "Who hurt you? They're not supposed to touch you at that school of yours; I'll have something to say to the Board of Directors first thing—"

"What's up?" Eustace's cousin Edmund had come out of the bedroom they shared while Edmund and Lucy's parents were in America. He was in the too-large pyjamas inherited from his elder brother Peter, though they wouldn't be too large for much longer. Edmund was fast filling out into the shape he'd wear as a man.

Both Eustace and Alberta looked at him sharply. "I heard all the commotion," the older boy said by way of explanation.

"You!" Alberta turned all her suspicions on him in an instant. "I'll thank you not to use that dirty slang under my roof. And if you've hurt my boy in any way you and that sister of yours will be out on your ears this minute, family or no family! I've always told Harold—"

"You're hurt?" Edmund's dark eyes immediately met his cousin's lighter ones in true concern. Gone were the days when the idea of Eustace injured was a matter of indifference to either of his cousins.

"Don't you interrupt me!" Alberta screeched.

"No," Eustace said, answering Edmund around his mother's hysterics. "I was coming out of the bath, and she saw—" He turned, displaying his bare back to Edmund and using the opposite hand to point out what he meant.

Eustace heard Edmund take a short involuntary breath. He turned back around, and they exchanged a long, meaningful, half-panicked look. Edmund knew perfectly well how Eustace had come by that scar. He also knew that explaining this to Alberta would be well nigh impossible. Just as they could never explain why Eustace had been behaving so differently in the past few days. Since they got back from Narnia.

How did you explain anything to do with magic, Eustace wondered, to someone as firmly grounded in the world she believed in as his mother? How could you say, "Oh, yes, that. A mad old man threw a sword in my back. Why, you ask? Because he thought I was an enemy. Well, (as an afterthought) I _was_ a dragon at the time."

And how did you explain the magnitude of the transformation that had taken place? It wasn't just the changing form. Though admittedly there were times when Eustace looked involuntarily down at himself convinced he still had scales, claws and wings. That was, fortunately, nothing but a memory. No, the biggest change had been inside him.

He saw things differently now. People were no longer out to get him, they just had their own way of looking at the world that was different from his. He could _like_ people. They could be friends, if he was decent to them and they were decent back.

He knew what it felt like now, not to run away from things he feared. He knew what it was to do something difficult and dangerous because it was worth doing. He knew what it was to be a part of something larger than himself.

And, if he dared admit it, he thought he knew what it felt like to be a hero.

How did you explain, then, that he was glad to have some sort of physical reminder of all he had had to go through to get where he was? That he was _glad_ that last lord's sword had left a scar?

"Well?" Alberta demanded of Edmund, bringing both boys back into the present moment and their dilemma. "Speak up!"

"That scar is old."

Edmund, Eustace and Alberta all swung to look at the unexpected speaker.

Lucy was in the doorway to her own small bedroom at the end of the short hall. The bedroom with the painting, where it had all begun, and ended.

Lucy stood there in her white nightgown, bare feet tucked modestly together. Despite the threadbare quality of the nightgown and her tousled, damp hair, she stood with such calm self-possession that Eustace for the first time could see her as a regal grown-up queen and not just his dreamy-eyed cousin.

Even Alberta must have noticed this, for she did not chide or reprimand Lucy as she normally would have done. She just eyed the dark-haired girl as if seeing her for the first time and was wary of the stranger.

Lucy came forward and touched Eustace's back with cool, gentle fingers. She ran them almost reverently down the line of the scar.

"The scar is old, Aunt Alberta," she said, still in that gentle, firm voice. "It's cleanly healed, probably for years. Neither Edmund nor I could have had anything to do with it."

Alberta had recovered enough by this point to snap, "And what would you know about it?"

Lucy met Eustace's eyes briefly, and a sparkle of amusement danced in them. Eustace remembered that of his four cousins, Lucy had been the healer when they had ruled Narnia.

"I learnt it at school," Lucy said. "The girls have been given basic nursing training. For the war, you know." Whether this was a lie or not Eustace couldn't tell. Knowing Lucy, it probably wasn't. She rarely lied outright.

"Well," huffed Alberta, but to Eustace's surprise she didn't argue the point. "In that case, how did it happen, Eustace Clarence? A scar that large, it must have hurt dreadfully."

In fact it had hurt a great deal to have a sword lodged between his foreleg and wing, and even the memory caused Eustace's shoulder to prickle uncomfortably. He shrugged that shoulder to try to dispel the feeling. "I…dunno…" he said carefully. "I might have cut myself on something so sharp I didn't even feel it. Some things, like glass, can be—" Reformed character or not, he still loved practical knowledge.

"Yes, yes," his mother interrupted before her son could start regaling her with the properties of glass. "But…" now her voice went anxious, "didn't it bleed? Surely you'd remember that?"

"No, I don't think it did, much." In point of fact this was true; he hadn't bled at all through his scaly hide.

Alberta didn't say anything. She just stared Eustace straight in the eyes the way she did with his cousins, trying to catch them in a lie. It was uncomfortable to have this gaze turned on him, but Eustace knew it was better for everyone if she never got a hint that something unusual had happened in her house just days ago. He tried his best to copy Lucy's manner of calm grown-up self-possession.

And she gave up. He could see it—she simply seemed to deflate, and all the indignation went out of her. Eustace had never before faced his mother down on anything without a great deal of fuss and noise. This strategy of taking on the manner of a grown-up might be worth repeating in the future if it made his mother halt in her tracks rather than continue to sniff around suspiciously.

"Well," she said with a huff. "Just remember if you've been fighting at school I'll find out about it!" And down the stairs she went, tut-tutting all the way.

"Well done, Eustace!" Edmund said the minute Alberta was out of earshot. "You were brilliant!"

Eustace grinned at him, pleased to be praised.

"I didn't know you had a scar from Lord Rhoop's sword," Lucy said. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't know," Eustace replied a little defensively. "It's right where I can't see it, unless I were looking at my back in the mirror." To illustrate he twisted his head round as far as it would go.

"It's all right, Lu," soothed Edmund. "It's an easy thing to miss unless you were looking for it. And we weren't. Too much has been going on."

Lucy nodded. "Does it hurt at all?"

"No," said Eustace. "I can't feel it. I wouldn't have known it was there until she said something." He paused, glancing between his two cousins. "I'm not sorry. To have the scar, I mean."

They both nodded as if they understood what he meant. He was fairly certain they did. And no more needed to be spoken.

They were quiet together in the hallway for another minute more, then Edmund shook himself. "Well, it's getting late. And we wouldn't want Aunt Alberta to think we're getting chummy or anything like that."

"I'll thank you not to use that dirty slang under my roof," quipped Eustace in a slightly higher-pitched voice than normal. To his surprise and pleasure, both Edmund and Lucy laughed.

"I think the rest of our time here might be slightly more bearable," Edmund said to Lucy, "If our cousin's finally grown a proper sense of humor."

And with that, they all went to their respective beds. Eustace lay there in the darkness for some time, fingers running absently up and down the place where he knew the scar was. Remembering. Remembering the agony of it. The terror that he was going to die in a dragon's shape, far from home. The strange, confused relief when he'd opened his eyes to meet the gentle ones of a huge lion coming towards him. The bizarre tearing sensation of his dragon's hide literally being ripped away to reveal the boy trapped underneath. Waking up in human shape with the knowledge that he could do what his instincts were screaming he do and flee, or he could do the right thing and take up the sword now lying beside him.

All of this sensation was embedded in the now-painless scar. Eustace hoped it would never fade. He never wanted to forget the lessons learned in Narnia, and the price it had cost to teach him.

Most of all, however, he wanted to remember what it felt like to meet that lion's eyes.


End file.
